Category Archives: PF Reader

As many of you know, one of my favorite budgeting tools is Mint.com – so I was a little giddy when their PR team reached out to me to include me in their “Expert Interview” series. I went to town answering questions on my networth goals, progress, ups and downs.

I’ll post the introduction to the article below, and then if you’re interested you can read the rest of the Q&A here. I am actually very proud of this Q&A because the answers really reflect the personal finance advice I would give to anyone at this point in my life!

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Imagine retiring with $2 million in the bank. Now stop imagining that goal and make it a reality.

With Her Every Cent Counts, readers get all kinds of tips and encourage to start building a net worth they can be proud of. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of hard work involved. In fact, the woman who started the site (who prefers to be anonymous) had a net worth of $250,000 by the time she was 30. She plans to grow that number to $2 million by the time she retires.

Her net worth tracker can be found on her website where readers can track her progress. This serves as an inspiration and real-life glimpse into what is possible when saving money.

To learn more about reaching your own financial goals, take a look at the helpful information in the interview [here.]

There are a lot of personal finance blog carnivals out there, but none that are focused on women writers only. A long time ago I decided to start the Carnival of Female Personal Finance Bloggers… and then, sadly, that didn’t go anywhere as my blog went on hiatus.

Now that I’m back in action, I’m getting this up and running again. So ladies, please submit your very best posts from the week to The Carnival of Female Personal Finance Bloggers!

I’m also looking for hosts for future editions… if you’re interested leave a comment here and be sure to include a contact e-mail address. I will follow up with details! 🙂

By the way, I’m having trouble with BlogCarnival.com right now… it’s not letting me sign up a new carnival, so if you’re interested in submitting to this and getting involved, leave me a comment and I’ll be sure to update you when submissions are open.

I’ve seen “The Yakezie Challenge” around on a few of my favorite personal finance blogs, so I decided to check it out. Apparently, it’s a group of personal finance and lifestyle bloggers joined together to help each other break 200,000 in Alexa Rankings (I’m currently 1,686,423 so I have a long way to go!) But it’s not all about site rank.

The reason I decided to join the challenge is that it requires a dedication to blogging 2-4 times per week for next six months. While I went through a period of my life where I blogged a lot, I stopped writing for Her Every Cent Counts for a while. While only a few readers would frequently comment on my posts, I knew there were others who were repeat visitors who probably wondered what happened to me.

Incredibly enough, I started this blog in 2007. I really don’t have enough posts to show for it. Additionally, and most importantly, this blog is designed to keep my finances in check. When I blog about my spending… I’m less likely to splurge. I know I have you, my reader, to hold me accountable. So, with that, I’m committing to the Yakezie challenge. I’m doing well so far… this weekend I’ve written 7 posts that will show up over the coming days. I look forward to reading your comments on them… some are quite controversial.

Every week, I read dozens of personal finance blogs from my favorite bloggers around the world. I keep track of them at www.personalfinancereader.com — if your blog isn’t on the list, please add it in a comment here to let me know.

This weekly PF Blogroll Roundup highlights some of my favorite posts across the Personal Finance web… it looks like this week, I owe congrats to a heaping handful of fellow bloggers that I’ve been following for years…

First off, congrats(!!!) to Fabulously Broke in the City for hitting $200k in networth! That’s an amazing feat. Fabulously broke also announced that she made $20,800 in INCOME in March, not counting her blogging income. Wow, that makes my $5k after-tax income seem a bit pathetic. She raised her networth by 5% in ONE MONTH by $8945. If that isn’t inspiring, I don’t know what is. I need to learn some tips on increasing my income from her, stat.

(If you write or know of an interesting PF blog please post a link to that blog in my comments. This way I’ll make sure to add that blog to list of feeds I read to compile my daily PF NewsBlog Roll list)

Here’s what going on in the PF blogosphere today…

The Basics: Jim, over at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity, gives a quick lesson for the Personal Finance Novice on how to save money. The advice is rather rudimentary, but for folks like me who understand the concept of saving, but never actually do it, it’s nice to have a reminder on the simple fact that in order to save one must spend less than they earn each month.

Home Shopping: GiveMeBackMyFiveBucks is on the market for some property. She’s decided on a mortgage broker and seems to be well underway in her permanent housing search. I can’t even imagine being able to afford buying property anytime soon, but it’s nice to read about what other folks go through to purchase their own place… as one day down the road I’d like to be able to afford a condo or a house.

Speak Up and Save: Mint’s always-informative PF blog has a great post on “Three Ways to Ask for More Money,” which should really be called “Speak Up and Save.” The Mint team recommends that asking for things like a lower credit card interest rate can end up saving you a lot of money in the long term. They also recommend calling up your cable company and asking for a discount. I just wonder if all the effort is really worth it. Calling up these companies is often so stressful that I need to spend a gazillion dollars on a therapist, or at least a whole lotta chocolate, to deal. I like Mint’s little self-promotion at the end of the post, which says that when the site goes live, it will be able to find money-saving things for its users, like the best local cable rate. Cool!

The Weekend Entreprenuer: Over on Queercents, Adam writes about his recent conversation with Michelle Anton, co-author of the book Weekend Entrepreneur: 101 Great ways to Earn Extra Cash. Sounds like a good read. I’ve figured out maybe 2 ways to earn some extra cash, so the book must have 99 more. Michelle and Adam talked about figuring out a way to balance extra work and play on the weekends in order to have a financially productive and quality lifestyle.

EBay Shopping Deals:Get Rich Slowly recently posted about a friend who is a obsessed with finding deals on eBay. She’s an eBay feen, tracking her searches for cute cocktail dresses and craft ideas in an excel sheet and using various online tools to make it easier to win auctions. The way I see it, eBay is just as bad as taking a trip to Marshalls, Ross, Filenes Basement or any other discount store. I was obsessed with eBay for a short time in my life. I’d buy things for “cheap” and spend a shitload in shipping. Or I’d just buy a lot of cheap things that I didn’t need and spend a lot. Perhaps some people are better at controlling themselves when it comes to shopping.

Stocks are sucking right now.The New York Times reports that a “jittery” stock market keeps on dropping as the mortgage market finds out just how screwed it is. I don’t know a thing about the mortgage market, but I do know that I’m still missing $300 from my mutual fund investments. Apparently swinging stocks, seen most blatantly on the Dow Jones industrial average, which was both up 1% and down 1% in the same day, is pretty rare. The last time that has happened was in 2003!

Congrats to “An English Major’s Money” for getting through the GRE. Hopefully it was worth the $140 test-taking fee. Her latest full-length post–”Freelance Income Follow-Up,” discusses the outcome of an earlier post of figuring out how to withhold taxes on her freelance earnings.

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About Me

The anti-minimalist: I'm the absolute worst with money. I have a shopping addiction. That's exactly why this blog exists. HECC is not a typical personal finance blog. I started it in 2007 to hold myself accountable for binge spending, a dropping networth, and lack of overall fiscal literacy. 10 years later, had achieved a networth of over $500k. Now my goal is to hit $1M by 40. Recently married and with my first kid on the way, things are about to get... interesting. I write about the intersection of mental health and money, spending & investing, and millennial personal finance.